While Peaky Blinders might be coming to a close with the upcoming sixth season airing February 27, creator Steven Knight has tantalized with ideas of where the story might go next. The crime-drama has only grown in estimation and popularity over its six seasons. Airing originally on BBC Two, which specializes in more niche programming, it was eventually moved to BBC One, which specializes in more popular and mainstream programs, after season 4. The show has even spawned Peaky Blinders: Mastermind, a puzzle-adventure video game, which was met with mixed to positive reviews.
Set in post WWI-era England, the now decades-spanning show focuses on the scramble to power for a street gang known as Peaky Blinders, led by Thomas "Tommy" Shelby (Cillian Murphy). Season 5 left Tommy, soldier for Queen and country turned soldier for the streets, in a dark place. Murphy has already promised the dark times are just beginning, and in season 6, things are going to get much worse. Last he was seen, the Birmingham gangster had a gun to his head after the plan to take down Oswald Mosely, leader of the British Union of Fascists, had failed.
Even still, this impending darkness doesn't signal the very end for the story, just the end for this incarnation of it. In a recent interview with EW, creator Steven Knight clarified: "I'm calling this the end of the beginning." He went on to state that while the show was ending with season 6, he had no intentions of stopping there as he's planned to film a movie to cap it off. Knight further teased that after the movie, a series of spinoffs could be set in motion, saying "...according to how the film structure falls into place, we'll set in motion some spin-offs that will be part of the same universe."
In the interview, Knight also detailed a plan to film the movie in at least 18 months, if not more, from now. This would put the movie's premiere tentatively around winter 2023, or towards the beginning of 2024. Knight's intention for this delay would be to allow an in-person event to occur to celebrate, barring further COVID pandemic complications. Talk of this upcoming movie has left plenty of viewers to speculate that Tommy likely won't make it out of the show alive. In the meantime, it's been over two years since season 5 premiered in the summer of 2019, and there's plenty to refresh on before season 6 begins.
Knight has had strict creative control over the show, writing all 36 of its episodes, and for fans of the universe he's created, this news is ripe with potential. While these spinoffs wouldn't necessarily continue the current branch of the story, they will still be set in the Peaky Blinders universe. "Who will these spinoffs focus on?" is bound to be a question on people's minds. Could it center on Grace Shelby (Annabelle Wallis), a former undercover agent and Tommy's first wife? Or Alfie Solomons (Tom Hardy), the seemingly unkillable leader of a rival gang in Camden Town? While there's certainly no shortage of characters beloved to fans, it's too early to know the answer, and it seems more than likely the spinoffs will center on characters never previously before seen and could even focus on an entirely different facet of post-war Britain's society altogether. One way or another, it's clear there's enough material in Knight's mind to keep the world of Peaky Blinders alive for years to come.
Source: EW